Filmmakers Turn To Video Tech

May 31, 1985|By Hans Fantel, The New York Times

Video technology is making inroads in the film industry. Although most feature filmmakers still prefer to work with conventional celluloid for its sharper image and truer color, many are taking advantage of video because of the possibilities it offers for the creation of spectacular effects and the ease and relative cheapness with which it can be edited.

This trend is likely to alter many aspects of the filmmaker`s art, even the way a movie is conceived by writers and directors, and it could affect filmmaking as profoundly as the advent of mobile equipment did a generation ago when on-location moviemaking became possible. Video technology also seems certain to reduce costs and is already upsetting labor relations in the industry.

A leading advocate of video-assisted filmmaking is the director-producer Francis Coppola, whose Rumble Fish and One From the Heart were among the first major features to make use of what has come to be known as electronic cinematography. Coppola speaks glowingly about how the new technology will soon permit editors to add or subtract apparent weight from actors on screen, extend or shorten their noses, change their expressions and place them in exotic settings with merely the twist of a dial.

Other directors, notably those involved with science fiction films, have already used video methods to create special effects. These electronic techniques are an offshoot of computer graphics -- creating images on a computer screen by keyboard commands -- and they make possible the quick and relatively cheap creation of spectacular ``visuals,`` which may then be photographed and incorporated into a feature film.

This technique, somewhat older than electronic editing, has been identified mainly with Star Wars and its numerous science fiction sequels and imitations, but it need not be confined to this genre. For example, the fantastic vision of the starry firmament that accompanies the aria of the Queen on the Night in the film Amadeus is an example of computer art pressed into cinematic service. Various spectral happenings in the film Ghostbusters likewise emanated from a computer programmer`s perfervid brain.

However, video techniques are having their greatest immediate effect in the editing room. A growing number of film producers now transfer filmed footage to videotape before editing. Then, working with tape, they may stitch bits of a movie together simply by pushing buttons instead of using the much more time-consuming technique of film splicing. When the editing is completed, the images are transferred from tape back to film.

``You no longer have to hunt for the right snippet of film dangling somewhere from a clothesline like laundry in the backyard,`` says Jim McGee, production supervisor at Centerpoint, an independent production company.

Such computerized editing results in enormous time savings. ``We can now do all the editing on a 90-minute show in three or four days. It used to take three weeks,`` McGee says. ``Now translate that into cost, and you wind up with a much cheaper product.``

It is estimated that for the average 90-minute feature the producer can save roughly $100,000 by using these new methods. Given this kind of incentive, it is hardly surprising that electronic editing attracts producers of low-budget made-for-television films. Movies made to be shown in theaters may still employ conventional techniques because the electronic process involves a certain loss of picture quality that would be apparent on the theater screen while being unnoticeable -- or at least tolerable -- on television.

Even so, several motion picture producers -- notably Francis Coppola and George Lucas -- are experimenting with technically advanced forms of electronic editing that minimize these drawbacks. Robert Redford even goes a step further. At Sundance Institute, Redford`s film workshop in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, special high-resolution video cameras and tape recorders, developed by the Sony Corp. for the Japanese state broadcasting service, are used in place of film as the primary image-making method.

``By using video as if it were film,`` says Ian Calderon, associate artistic director of the institute, ``we get good-quality images that effectively express the mood and style of the material and provide filmmakers with the fastest way of learning.``

Filmmakers are evidently eager to learn. Sensing that the future of their trade -- both in television and for theatrical features -- will be increasingly geared to electronics, they are lining up for special workshops offered by the American Film Institute at its Center for Advanced Film Studies to acquaint film folk from executives down to lab technicians with the ins and outs of the new methods.